So after years of searching I finally got my hands on a dvd of this movie. This is the movie that got me into anime and still is one of my most favorite movies of all time. For those of you who have never seen this movie it a collection of eight short films done buy eight of the best animators at the time. This movie isn't big on story and the movies tend to be rather abstract and open to intepertation, but the real reason to watch this movie is the beautiful animation. This is a must have for any fan of anime. You can find the movie at http://www.discountanimedvd.com/product_list_category.asp?cate=101 . The movie is a import so everything is in japanese, but there are english subtitles.

My favorites story was the one with the wood and clockwork Japanese mech vs. the iron mech with the European mad scientist at the controls (was it steam, coal powered, or something else?). Very exciting, funny, and a clever spoof of the giant fighting robot genre of anime. Nice bit of steampunk as well.

One of the first anime features I ever saw, WTBS used to show this and a heavily edited Vampire Hunter D in the 90s on weekends. Considering the growth in popularity and influence anime has had in the US since Akira first got real notice on these shores, I think TBS missed a real chance to tap into a growing and loyal audience by not creating a block of anime film programming at the time.

SciFi did this a little but never expanded on it or had strings of episodes of OAV series lumped together as "films" but only had part of the series, I remember being annoyed with them for only having the first few episodes of Record of Lodoss War. And for showing Casshan Robot Hunter over and over and over, along with Venus Wars which the guys at the local comic shop hated so much they kept calling it "Penis Wars" If anyone - like say Menard - wants to make a porn and/or fanboy joke, leave it over there. ==========>